Thus Kanye's use of Nina Simone’s version of the song has been criticized by some for perverting a song about lynching into song about Molly-popping and “second string bitches.” Jay-Z, too, embeds his lyrical appropriation of the song (this time the original Billie Holiday) into a scene of lavish wealth and luxury. Hov could be said to be playing the song seemingly casually (“on holiday”), the background music for drifting on a yacht and spilling rent-money-priced champagne into the sea.

But despite the incongruity (or maybe precisely because of it), both references to the classic song fit in their respective places. Or, rather, they fit because they don’t. Both Kanye and Jay exemplify (especially with their latest offerings) and embody rap’s fundamental principle of contradiction.Yeezus is whiplash-inducing in its swiftly shifting contradictions: braggadocio and vulnerability collide inside couplets, freedom and bondage alternate, the street and penthouse meet. Ye chose the contradictory slamdances “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” to introduce Yeezus to the world. Hova’s entire corpus is a tale of warring, contradictory ideals. He explains in his book Decoded: “Rap is built to handle contradictions…this is one of the things that makes rap at its best so human.” Hov has wrestled since Reasonable Doubt with the ever-elusive resolution of the hustler with the humanist. Jay is the first to deny any “conscious” rapper label, yet he’s regularly involved histories of political struggle in his oeuvre.

But the extreme incongruity is still jarring and unsettling. How does the stench of death and the brutality of white terrorism operate in each artist’s interpretation? What do we make of Jay and Kanye’s embroidery of the Black struggle onto the contemporary moment? Especially in the case of Kanye, is “Strange Fruit” an evocation of the past, a description of the present, or a foretelling of what’s to come? Or is it all three, a warning about the evils of power unchecked? What does it mean, new slaves? Who are the slaves?

Kanye’s “new slaves” are perhaps as much a product of corporate capitalism as race. In his impromptu February “rant” in London, Yeezy railed against corporations and their control, joining a critique of corporate capitalism with his existing critique of race: “racism and materialism is killing blacks” He continues the charge on “New Slaves”:

And it should be mentioned that every single song on the Jay/Ye collaborative album Watch the Throne mentions race and racial politics. So while Kanye describes the beginnings of a post-racial mode of control according to the dictates of the corporation, race is still the mode of power which preoccupies Kanye.

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Jigga is less conflicted about the power of the corporate elite, though hardly quietly contented by it. He’s described himself as a “product of Reaganomics,” citing the turning point in modern American history when the wealthy elite made their power grab, leaving the rest of us in precarity. Jay-Z’s ability to boast about his vast wealth is legendary, yet he shows incredible remorse for his initial elitist neglect of Katrina victims in the poignant lament “Minority Report.” He remains conflicted about his acquisition of wealth. It’s a problem since Reasonable Doubt for Hova.

In the two pre-MCHG releases, Jay-Z does make rare critiques of economics. On his fiery “Open Letter,” he packages an entire critique in a single tight couplet:

In other words, globalized capitalism covers the earth, even (or especially) China, despite our outdated descriptor, “communist.” No, China has only perfected authoritarian capitalism, using its residual police state apparatus to enforce the will of global capital and keep labor costs low for the likes of Apple, Walmart and the corporation who made Jay’s microphone with veritable slave labor.

Jay-Z has addressed race as much as Kanye has, if in a typically more oblique and nuanced manner. Racism and its effects pervade Jay’s work, but he isn’t usually as direct in his naming of it. Hov has seen himself as a sort of lyrical ambassador of the hood, explaining the conditions of late-20th and early-21st century racism:

In addition to the six-minute “Blood on the Leaves,” Kanye repeats the line furiously in “New Slaves,” alternating the macabre scene of racist violence with a now-familiar condemnation of corporate control:

It is overstatement, to be sure. No US citizen can be said to be a slave or in any way like a target of lynching, despite the increasing power of the corporate regime. But as old modes of power dissolve (race, gender and the state), the matrix of multinational corporations and banks assume the power of governance. Try to do anything that doesn’t involve working for, buying from, or being advertised to by corporations.